isolated was the Church's position, at any rate from the main stream of events.
In the further west, just that period saw the fall of the Roman Empire. Alaric had entered Rome in 410; and in the next generation, Goths, Vandals and other "barbarians" were establishing themselves in Gaul, Spain and Africa. Still, the Hesperiae sonitum ruinae which Horace had heard in imagination remained inauditum Medis when at last it acually came to pass.
Probably the activity of the Turks, which forced Persia to stand on guard on the Oxus, was but another manifestation of that mysterious outburst of energy in Central Asia which at the same time was sending Attila and his Huns to the West, and to the Catalaunian plains. Both empires were facing phases of a common danger, but each was ignorant of the other's fortunes.
In the nearer west, Asia Minor and Constantinople, events which were to have the most important influence on the history of the Assyrian Church were in actual course; but at that time its members seem to have been almost as ignorant of them as they had been of Nicæa and the Arian struggle. The Christological controversy, which had begun before the close of the fourth century, was rapidly becoming what it was to remain until the rise of Islam, viz., the dominant question in both Church and State in the Eastern Empire.
Hitherto we have been attempting to trace the story of the relations of the Church in the Persian Empire with the Government of that empire; and also, as far as our material will permit, the history of the internal life of the Church in question. Now a new element is introduced; and we have also to trace the effect of the impact of this great controversy, in its various phases, on the particular melet whose history forms our main subject.
